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Steve Forbes, Chairman/CEO of Forbes and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Magazine, is Eckerd College Commencement Speaker

posted on 03/31/2009

Steve Forbes, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Forbes and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes magazine, will be the speaker for the 46th Commencement of Eckerd College on Sunday, May 17, 2009. Mr. Forbes will receive an honorary doctorate in humane letters.

Forbes, the company's flagship publication, is one of the nation's leading business magazines, circulating over 900,000. Since Mr. Forbes assumed his position in 1990, the company has grown exponentially, launching a variety of new publications and businesses including Forbes Asia, ForbesLife, and the company's ten local-language editions (including Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Brazilian, Russian, Arabic and Hebrew). Forbes publications reach a worldwide audience of more than five million readers.

Mr. Forbes is involved extensively in government and public service. In 1985, President Ronald Reagan named Mr. Forbes chairman of the bi-partisan Board for International Broadcasting (BIB), a position in which he oversaw the operation of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Mr. Forbes was reappointed to this post by President George H. W. Bush and served until 1993.

In both 1996 and 2000, Mr. Forbes campaigned for the Republican nomination for President, advancing a platform that included a flat tax, medical savings accounts, a new Social Security system for working Americans, parental choice of schools for their children, term limits, and a strong national defense.

Born in Morristown, New Jersey, Mr. Forbes graduated cum laude from Brooks School in North Andover, Massachusetts. He received his B.A. in history from Princeton University in 1970 and was the founding editor of Business Today, now the country's largest student published magazine with a circulation of 200,000.

Mr. Forbes currently serves on the boards of The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, the Heritage Foundation and The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. He is on the Board of Overseers of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the Board of Visitors for the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University. Mr. Forbes also served as a member of the Board of Trustees for Princeton for ten years.